Theodore Decker: Rover Pipeline gives Ohio the shaft

Thursday

May 11, 2017 at 5:40 AMMay 11, 2017 at 5:40 AM

The Texas oil and gas barons who are spilling and burning their way across Ohio are proving to be masters of misdirection.

They were champing at the bit to start their natural-gas pipeline earlier this year purely for the sake of endangered bats. Last month, they blamed the Earth for repeated slurry spills, and this week they're pointing fingers at the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency.

But in a small victory for all Ohioans who believe the state's environmental health shouldn't come second to the interests of out-of-state energy tycoons, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission stepped into the fray Wednesday and put the brakes on parts of the $4.2 billion Rover Pipeline project.

In a letter to Joey Mahmoud, Rover's senior vice president, the commission cited concerns that have arisen since a whirlwind of construction on the 700-mile line began in February. The commission took particular umbrage at the April 13 spill in Stark County of 2 million gallons of a clay-water mixture used to lubricate the drills.

"Staff has serious concerns regarding the magnitude of the incident ... its environmental impacts, the lack of clarity regarding the underlying reasons for its occurrence, and the possibility of future problems," wrote Terry L. Turpin, director of the FERC Office of Energy Projects, in a frank smackdown that, in today's Washington, might land him in hot water. The commission ordered a halt to new drilling and better oversight of ongoing work.

Companies that do this kind of drilling and spilling like to call the slurry spills "inadvertent releases," presumably because that phrasing leaves them out of it while sounding more scholarly than "environmental oopsies."

The commission's order might have sent the bigwigs at Rover Pipeline LLC and corporate parent Energy Transfer Partners running for the Rolaids. They have been hurrying to finish the first phase of construction by July. Profits slip from their grasp with every delay, like a flood of drilling lubricant burbling through a defiled Ohio wetland.

But Energy Transfer Partners has plenty of money and clout. Its co-founder is billionaire Texan Kelcy Warren, a titan of the industry, a neighbor of George W. Bush and a significant donor to the campaign of President Donald Trump. Until late last year, Trump had been a shareholder.

I called Energy Transfer Partners spokeswoman Alexis Daniel to ask about the commission's order.

"In response to your voicemail, we have received the letter from the FERC," Daniel wrote in an email. "We continue to work with them and the OEPA on a resolution to this matter."

When the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency proposed last week that Rover face more than $431,000 in penalties for 18 violations, including the spills and open burning, Rover was hardly contrite. It argued instead that the state doesn't understand the challenges of the business and has no authority to seek penalties.

"It is unfortunate that the Ohio EPA has misrepresented the situation and misstated facts in its comments," the company said Tuesday in another email. "We take these releases seriously, and we continue to work closely with the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency (OEPA) on this matter as well as to strengthen their understanding of the (drilling) process."

Read that second sentence again, particularly the last half. You will find no finer example of what my dad, far from an uncouth man, used to call, "having brass ones."

If this seems a brash response to a monitoring state agency, remember that this is a company that also blamed the planet and its many faults for the "inadvertent releases."

Ohio EPA spokesman James Lee said Wednesday that his agency had asked FERC to step in.

"We’re pleased with FERC's action to prohibit new drilling and require the company to implement additional environmental protection in areas where they are already drilling,"he said.

But an observation that OEPA Director Craig Butler made Monday points to the overarching problem.

"We don't think they're taking Ohio seriously," Butler said.

They're not. With money to burn and friends in high places, they don't have to.

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